For three weeks last November, I met the same little girl every rainy morning outside the bus stop near Drumcondra. I was staying in a small room above a shop after my marriage ended, and each day I took the bus into town before seven, pretending to be the sort of man who had somewhere important to go. In truth, I was going to a temporary job stacking shelves near Parnell Street, the kind of work you take when you need your hands to be busy because your head is not safe on its own.
I had forgotten how Dublin rain can feel personal. It came sideways across the road, slipped down the back of your collar, soaked the cuffs of your trousers, and made you feel foolish for existing. I owned no umbrella then. Mine had been left behind in the old house in Clontarf, along with books, wedding photos, and a blue mug that said Best Dad, though my son was away in Galway and not speaking to me much at the time.
The girl was maybe seven or eight. She wore a red coat, black wellies with white stars, and carried a bright yellow umbrella far too large for her. Her grandmother stood beside her most mornings, wrapped in a navy raincoat, one hand on a shopping trolley and the other resting gently on the child’s shoulder. They were waiting for a different bus than mine, but our stop had no proper shelter, only a wet pole and a timetable that seemed to be lying for sport.
The first morning it happened, I was trying to shield my phone inside my jacket, checking if the 16 was delayed again. A small voice beside me said, “You can come under mine if you want.” I looked down and saw the yellow umbrella tilted towards me, its metal ribs trembling in the wind. I laughed, not because it was funny, but because I didn’t know what to do with kindness that direct.
“I’m grand, love,” I said.
“You’re not,” she replied, very seriously. “Your hair is dripping.”
Her grandmother smiled without embarrassment, as if the child regularly rescued damp adults from their own pride. So I bent a little and stood under the edge of the umbrella. It covered one of my shoulders and half of hers. The grandmother shifted closer too, and for five minutes we formed a strange little triangle against the rain.
Her name was Saoirse. She told me this on the second morning, along with the fact that she was learning to spell “chrysanthemum” because her teacher said it was impossible and Saoirse did not like being told what was impossible. On the third morning, she asked why I never had an umbrella. I said I kept forgetting. She looked at me as if forgetting an umbrella in Dublin was a moral failing, then said, “You should write it on your hand.”
I began to look forward to those mornings, which was embarrassing to admit. I was a grown man taking comfort from a child with a yellow umbrella, but grief makes you small in odd ways. I had spent months feeling invisible, moving through O’Connell Street and Temple Bar like a ghost, watching people in cafés and pubs lean towards each other in warm conversation. Saoirse did not know any of that. She only knew that rain was falling and I was standing in it.
One Thursday, the rain was worse than usual, hammering the road so hard the buses sent waves over the kerb. Saoirse and her grandmother were there, but the grandmother looked pale. She kept one hand pressed against her chest and was breathing through her mouth. Saoirse was
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